By LNL NEWS – August 7, 2023
Two months after the capture of Kinshasa by the AFDL troops, the American Congress began questioning the role of the United States in the massacres of the Zairian population and the actions of Paul Kagame’s troops.
American officials such as Ambassador Richard Bogosian and Phyllis Oakley acknowledged systematic and ethnic massacres in Zaïre-Congo, where Rwandan Tutsi rebels reportedly massacred hundreds of Hutu refugees on November 17, 1996.
Christopher Smith, the chairman of the Subcommittee on International Relations in charge of human rights, therefore asked President Clinton for clarification on the decisions made by the U.S. government to establish the “truth about these massacres” at a time when the murderers were trained by Washington as snipers in July and August 1996. Mr. Christopher’s questions caused a “real discomfort in the White House.”
Christopher’s Approaches to President Clinton
In the absence of a response from the Clinton Administration, 8 months later, on April 24, 1998, Smith reiterated a new request still in the “search for a complete account in francs on the participation of the United States alongside Rwandan troops in Congo and the use of materials that the USA had purchased and provided to Uganda if they would have ended up in the hands of the APR, of the AFDL active in the conflict in the East of Zaïre between 1996 and 1997.
Christopher’s approaches to President Clinton and Benjamin Arthur Gilman to the Pentagon – where he received an evasive response from the Under Secretary of Defense, Walter Slocombe; pushed Bill’s Administration to understand that certain members of Congress had a lot of information about its foreign policy in Congo-Zaïre.
Dissimulation of the Truths about the Massacres in Zaïre
American President Bill Clinton and Under Secretary of Defense M.Gilman concealed the truth about the massacres in Zaïre committed by Rwandan soldiers between 1996 and 1997 and continued to ensure the training of Rwandan Tutsi soldiers in counter-insurgency but also in intelligence, logistics, and management. Rwandan soldiers continued to benefit from the fruits of regular training alongside American soldiers in American military schools. The role of American military personnel in Rwanda was more significant than what was revealed.
Subsequently, the American company “Haliburton“, the official supplier of war material to the American army, signed a contract with the Pentagon for the construction of the largest Rwandan military training center in Mulindi-Rwanda. This is where American military advisers settled to deliver their programs to Rwandan Tutsi soldiers. The American government has especially contributed to mobilizing funds to allow the Rwandan army to develop and extend its public relations campaign on genocide.
WHILE THE ZAIRIANS OR CONGOLESE HAVE NOT COMMITTED ANY CRIME OR MASSACRE IN RWANDA, WHY ARE THEY ATTACKED AND MASSACRED IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY BY RWANDAN TUTSI SOLDIERS ?
Why did the international community not want the establishment of an International Criminal Tribunal in Congo to judge the criminals of crimes in Congo like the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) set up on November 8, 1994, by the United Nations Security Council to judge the people involved in the genocide ?
And if in the “Mapping” report, we are told that there were crimes committed against Hutu refugees exiled in Zaïre in 1994 ; why pretend to do justice to the very people that the United Nations had “renounced sending a civil protection force ?” Academics, diplomats, and pro-Kigali journalists seemed to consider that these refugees were “legitimate targets for Rwandan Tutsi soldiers.” However, the number of refugees was decisive in the decision of the United Nations Security Council to approve or not, the “deployment of an international military contingent in charge of the protection of refugees in Zaïre.”
Our blood freezes in horror in our bodies when we hear the United Nations brandish the democratic values supposedly so dear to their heart. And I think that today, the Congolese have the right to know that the “Western scholars and the United Nations” do not have clean hands in the “crimes and massacres perpetrated” in the DRC.
Washington’s Involvement in the Invasion of Zaïre
Rather convincing evidence has shown that the United States has piloted the tragic events in the African Great Lakes region, in order to put an end to the Mobutu regime, and this, at the price of a heavy human toll.
Tom Cooper recounts that “apart from providing financial assistance and a training program to Rwandan soldiers, there are strong indications showing that American officials from the U.S. embassy in Kigali – and mainly the American military attaché, have greatly contributed to follow the active advance of the AFDL troops in Zaïre and study the attitude of the FAR (Zairian Armed Forces) and the Zairian population.”
The political and military involvement of the United States in the action of Rwandan troops within the AFDL is therefore manifest and, in this respect, one can understand why President Clinton had difficulties in “answering the questions of members of the American Congress” on his foreign policy in Rwanda and Zaïre and did not want to further “respond to the approaches of Juan Carrero in his struggle to prevent the massacres in Congo in 1997.”
It turns out that the Secretary of Defense, William Pery, American President Bill Clinton, and other American officials have aided Paul Kagame’s regime in destabilizing and destroying Congo-Zaïre. Their roles are indisputable.
HOW TO JUDGE THIS AID FROM THE UNITED STATES USED FOR THE MASSACRES OF INNOCENT CIVILIAN POPULATIONS ?
The future will tell us !
©2023-Daniel MOMBELE